Sunstroke and Other Stories

After just two novels, Accidents In The Home and Everything Will Be All Right, Tessa Hadley has established herself as one of the most perceptive and entertaining writers in Britain, ‘a rare and startling gem' whose writing is ‘fantastically subtle, absorbing and insightful' (Guardian). Sunstroke is her first collection of stories.

Everyday life crackles with the electricity sparking between men and women, between parents and children, between friends. A son confesses to his mother that he is cheating on his girlfriend; a student falls in love with her lecturer and embarks on an affair with a man in the pub who looks just like him. Young mothers pent-up in childcare dream treacherously of other possibilities; a boy becomes aware of the woman, a guest at his parents' holiday home, who is pressing up too close against him on the beach. A daughter remembers running away from home with her mother; two sisters from a family of nine vow together to grow up free from dreary women's problems.Hidden away inside the present, the past is explosive; the future can open unexpectedly out of any chance encounter; ordinary moments are illuminated with lightning flashes of dread or pleasure. These stories about family life are somehow undomesticated and dangerous.

"Hadley's style is as discreet as good tailoring. She writes with an elegant assurance" - Patrick Gale, Independent

"The stories sparkle...Hadley is fascinating for the way she admits a fantasy or a missed chance can be more significant than the actual events that shape a life" - Metro

"Tessa Hadley excels in glimpses: those small, burning memories that we never lose and which haunt as well as remind... A wonderful collection" - Brian Henigan, Herald

"A wholly satisfying collection of stories...Distinguished by a dry humour and prose that often surprises but is never merely showy, Sunstroke catches life on the wing and pins it, fiercely struggling to the page" - Peter Parker, Sunday Times

"Tessa Hadley is very much of the time - she is the writer we didn't know we were waiting for, until she arrived" - Anne Enright, Guardian

"In Sunstroke nothing is stable or predictable... These wonderfully elegant but rather unsettling stories may be set within the confines of the home, but they are not cosy" - Clare Staunton, Time Out, Book of the Week

Tessa Hadley is the author five highly praised novels, Accidents In The Home, which was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, Everything Will Be Alright, The Master Bedroom, The LondonTrain and Clever Girl, and two collections of stories, Sunstroke and Married Love. She lives in London and is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Her stories appear regularly in the NewYorker and other magazines.